Re: Do I Need a Firewall?

From: Eirik Seim (eirik_at_mi.uib.no)
Date: 07/10/03 

Date: 10 Jul 2003 00:22:44 GMT

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 23:48:34 GMT, Larry wrote:
> Are you a dialup customer? If so, you don't need it because you're
> not online with the same IP constantly. Chances of being attacked on
> dialup are small.....

That is simply not true. Automated attacks, that often scan large
netblocks for vulnerable hosts does not care who has which IP address.
At least one of my former cow-orkers did experience freshly installed
Windows workstations beeing cracked while installing patches from
windowsupdate.. It can happen the very second you connect.

That makes for a good reason to install and patch freshly installed
systems from behind a NAT-router, or similar.

[cutting some nice remarks on Outlook Express]

> I'd suggest sealing up the system, before worrying about the FUDware
> Firewall garbage.

I couldn't agree more!

[cutting more stuff that makes sense]

> Now you're pretty safe. Even my FTP server runs quite safely this
> way....(c;

Anonymous, or at least no username&passwords that can be used anywhere
else, I guess?

- Eirik 

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